


Circumbendibus

by schizoauthoress



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode: The Day of the Doctor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 09:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16808188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schizoauthoress/pseuds/schizoauthoress
Summary: Susan Foreman-Campbell seeks out the Doctor for a very important mission, and a reunion that won't be remembered.Prompt: If I survive, can I go home?





	Circumbendibus

**Author's Note:**

> It is canon that the Doctor went off and had a few adventures 'between' leaving at the end of "Rose" (2005) and coming back to mention that his ship travels in time as well as space. So that's when the Doctor is, in his personal timeline.

He was alone. He was the last of the Time Lords, and the knowledge that he alone was responsible for that fact weighed heavily on his mind.

The Doctor did his best to never let that show -- though the pain was still sharp, and the anger like a pacing predator often felt barely contained in his mind, he wanted to be the Doctor again. He'd had his fill of being a warrior.

That was part of why he left Ali behind on Karkinos. She'd been all too willing to kill in the fight that ensued in Babylon, and he didn't want to keep putting her in situations like that. She was young and smart and deserved better than becoming inured to death and suffering like his previous self had been.

The Doctor sighed. He did not like being alone, with only the TARDIS for company. He tended to get lost in his own thoughts, his own regrets and recriminations, when he was alone. That was why he wanted to go back to where and when he'd left Rose Tyler, and offer her the chance to travel with him again.

Should he, though? She'd already said no.

"I need to get to a planet," the Doctor said aloud, as he flipped switches on the control panel. "Take a walk, clear my head..."

There was a distinct ripple of alien amusement in his mind following those words. The Doctor smiled wryly.

"Well," he said to the TARDIS, "as clear as it ever gets, old girl."

****

He left his granddaughter behind on Earth, deciding that she ought to have the chance to settle somewhere, and not live his rootless and wild existence traipsing through time and space. He'd rarely ever visited the time and place that she'd made her home -- perhaps not wanting to tempt her with the possibility of returning to the TARDIS, or perhaps not wanting to tempt himself with the possibility of stealing her away from the life she'd built. 

She'd gone to fight in a war he'd started -- the Daleks would have never known of Time Lords, had his first self not travelled to Skaro -- and she'd been on Gallifrey on that last terrible day. She was as dead as the rest of his people, and he missed her terribly -- his dear little Susan, his granddaughter Arkytior.

The Doctor saw her -- rather, thought he saw her -- everywhere. It was just the grief. It was just the guilt. It was just the stupid, pointless longing for the chance to do things differently -- to save his people rather than destroy them, and not doom the universe in doing so.

Because, in the end, that's what the choice to use the Moment had been. The Time Lords were willing to wipe out the rest of existence to end the Daleks and ensure their own survival, and he had not been willing to let them.

And yet... he still found himself turning to follow any movement that reminded him of her -- eyes seeking that familiar dark hair, ears tuned to anything that sounded like her delighted laughter -- a moment of hopeful amnesia soon chased away by an awful recollection of the truth. 

That walk he wanted turned into a slog through one of the busiest bazaar planets in the 46th century. The chaotic surroundings and the attention needed to keep from being knocked over by other customers kept him from thinking about anything other than the here and now. So when the Doctor heard his granddaughter's voice call out "Grandfather!" he knew it for nothing more than wishful thinking.

It was just some other person with a voice close enough to hers, alien speech muddled enough by the buzz of conversation and bartering in a dozen different languages that his brain made the association with the English word.

Then he heard it again, in clear and perfect Gallifreyan: "Grandfather, would you please turn around?"

The Doctor froze in his tracks, then had to duck to avoid getting whacked right in the face. The merchant babbled out an apology in the common language and tried once again to reposition the awning that refused to remain upright. The Doctor shook his head, steadied the pole in question, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver to fix the problem.

A minute later, he walked away from the stall with a fancy silk umbrella tucked under one arm, bemused. He knew that several races who prided themselves on trade and acquisition found it incredibly rude to reject payment, which was really the only reason he accepted it -- as compensation for his services. Better to take the thing than to make a scene by refusing.

The Doctor wove his way through the crowd, heading for the refreshment area with the vague idea of bartering his prize for a cool drink. Then something tugged on the umbrella from behind him.

"Hey, none of that now!" The Doctor exclaimed, turning to see who had either jostled him or attempted to grab the thing from him. And he found himself staring into his granddaughter's face.

Because it was his granddaughter -- it was Arkytior. He'd never seen this face before, so she must have regenerated. But her eyes -- sharp and dark and shining -- were the same, and when he dropped the silly silk umbrella to grab her hands in both of his, it was her familiar mind that brushed his along the connection of their physical contact.

And the first thing she said to him was: "You're going to forget this."

"How could I ever forget that you're alive?" The Doctor asked, smiling as wide as he ever had, tears spilling from his eyes.

Arkytior pulled a hand free to reach up and brush at his cheek, sweeping away some of the tears. She was smiling, too. She was crying, too. "Because it will break time if you don't forget."

He had to shake his head with a wry smile as he understood. "And something else will break if you're not here, now, with me."

What reason she could have for needing him in this particular life, with this particular face, the Doctor didn't try to guess. Not yet. (He didn't have nearly enough information for a good one, after all.) She needed the Doctor to be him, here and now, fresh from the Time War -- and he trusted his granddaughter enough to believe that -- no matter how much it would hurt him to go back to believing she was gone afterward.

"Yes," Arkytior said. She looked up at him, and through her tears, her dark eyes sparkled with familiar mischief. "Do you want to help me save the universe?"

The Doctor laughed out loud and swept his granddaughter up into his arms, spinning her around because if he kept still he might just burst from joy and pride. "Oh, Susan!" he exclaimed, "I should have known you'd survive!"

The other patrons of the bazaar gave them a wide berth by now, parting around them like a stream flowing around a large rock. Neither Time Lord nor Time Lady paid the crowd much attention.

"Too much like you by half!" Arkytior replied with a delighted laugh. Her father's words, once a criticism of herself and her beloved grandfather, were simply fact in her mouth -- stated with a warmth and affection that completely removed the sting.

"More than half, my darling girl," the Doctor said. He set her back on her feet and winked. "Two-thirds, perhaps?"

She laughed, and unlike his previous self, the Doctor did not pretend affront. He loved to see her happy, and he knew that this would probably be the last time in a long time that he could think of her without the weight of his guilt warping all other feeling. He offered her a hand, and she took it.

"I'd say 'race you to the TARDIS'," the Doctor commented as they started to walk back to the timeship, "but I think you'd still have a speed advantage on this old man."

Arkytior raised an eyebrow. "If the TARDIS is parked in rough terrain, you know, you'd have the advantage."

It was the Doctor's turn to laugh. "Oh, I'd completely forgotten! You did twist your ankles an awful lot."

"Only because we were running for our lives an awful lot." She gave his hand an affectionate squeeze. "But I did love travelling with you, grandfather. It was worth all the frights and twisted ankles in the universe."

A thought struck him, and the Doctor's mood went somber. His voice was low, and a little strained, when he asked, "Was it worth it, in the end? Did roaming through time and space as a renegade do any good, when I couldn't even save our people?"

She gave him a sidelong look, regarding him in silence for a while as they walked. He looked down at her, certain that her silence meant she was having second thoughts about his ability to help her.

She frowned, glanced down at their hands, and then looked up so that their eyes met. "Who says this is the end?"

"What?"

"The moment has passed, as all moments do," Arkytior intoned, "and we cannot return to it with these faces." It was an old lesson of the Prydon Academy that he'd passed on to her, a warning not to cross one's own timeline within the same regeneration. But...

"'The moment has passed'..." the Doctor repeated. "But that's not how it goes..."

The mischeivous glint was back in her eyes as Arkytior let of go his hand and asked, "Isn't it?"

The Ninth Doctor repeated again, "The moment has passed..." By now, they had arrived at the TARDIS. He put his left hand on the left side door, and the TARDIS herself sent a flash of memory to him -- the face of that girl, Rose Tyler, except he'd been wearing another face and she wasn't Rose Tyler, she was -- "The Moment!"

"You remembered wrong," Arkytior said. "You remember your resolve to use the weapon, don't you? And how you didn't intend to live after using it."

The words are spoken with a raw edge, pain so close to the surface. Arkytior fought in the Time War, too, deciding to join after the second Dalek invasion of Earth in the 22nd century. He hadn't wanted her to do so. Following his regeneration during the Time War, he'd kept her at a distance, citing that he wasn't the Doctor anymore. As if a change of name made them any less family, when a change of face did not.

He'd been such a fool. Probably he still was, because he couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"What do you remember?" she asked.

The Doctor swallowed hard, and his voice was stilted with suppressed emotion when he answered, "The Dalek ships were burning. Gallifrey was gone. I was alone, and I knew... it was all my fault. I killed them all, Dalek and Time Lord and Gallifreyan all the same."

Arkytior reached up to touch his face again. "Regeneration plays merry hell with the memory, Grandfather." 

"Someone sent you to me," the Doctor said.

"I volunteered."

"This is the way it goes, isn't it?" He pressed his free hand over hers, keeping her palm cradled against his face. "This is the way it really goes."

"Can you time-lock a planet?" Arkytior asked.

It was such a strange question. And it seemed completely out of place. The Doctor opened his mouth to ask what that had to do with anything --

Then the connection was made, then the memory resurfaced, and he barely held back his laughter.

He remembered being his first self, and being asked to begin the calculations to time-lock a planet. At the time, he'd assumed the young man was just a desperate soldier speaking for the War Council. He'd blustered and grumbled about the processing power it would take, about the hundreds and hundreds of years it would take to figure out how to freeze an entire planet and all the people on it in...

_'...a single moment in time, held in a parallel pocket universe.'_

Now the Doctor remembered speaking those words on the last day of the Time War. Now he realized that the young man who'd contacted his first self must have been himself, from the future -- the future, even relative to this particular present, which is why he hadn't been able to recall it until now, and would not be able to recall it afterward. He looked at Arkytior with wide eyes, with the barest spark of hope beginning to kindle in his mind. His granddaughter smiled warmly at him, and she asked again,

"Do you want to help me save the universe?"


End file.
